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Email Company Used By Edward Snowden Shuts Down Rather Than Hand Data Over To Feds

When Edward Snowden emailed journalists and activists in July to invite them to a briefing at the Moscow airport during his long stay there, he used the email account “edsnowden@lavabit.com” according to one of the invitees. Texas-based Lavabit came into being in 2004 as an alternative to Google’s Gmail, as an email provider that wouldn’t scan users’ email for keywords. Being identified as the provider of choice for the country’s most famous NSA whistleblower led to a flurry of attention for Lavabit and its encrypted email services, fromjournalists, and also, apparently, from government investigators. Lavabit founder Ladar Levison announced Thursday that he’s shutting down the company rather than cooperating with a government investigation (presumably into Snowden).

Lavabit’s website now displays a message about the shutdown, available in full below, along with a request for help paying the legal bill to fight the government in court.

“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit,” writes Levison. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations.”

It’s unclear whether the government has already seized the company’s servers. Levison says that he’s under a gag order and thus can’t discuss the government investigation that he’s been fighting over the last six weeks. Gag orders like that often come with information requests in national security investigations. Nick Merrill of the Calyx Institute famously spent six years fighting off one of those requests — though the fame only came after the six years were up when he reached a settlement with the government releasing him partially from the gag.

It’s amazing how much the climate in the U.S. has changed that someone like Levison actually feels empowered to write a letter like this one. Merrill feared being sent to prison if he spoke out publicly about what he felt was an unconstitutional request for a customer’s data.

“I can relate to the difficult choice Mr. Levison is being forced to make, as I made a similar choice in 2004 after I received a National Security Letter demanding information on a client of my ISP, and then spent the better part of a decade challenging the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance in federal court,” says Nick Merrill by email. “It would be one thing if dragnet surveillance was in compliance with the 4th amendment and bedrock American values, and it would be another thing if it was proven to keep us safer. But unfortunately, neither of those is true.”

Presumably, the government is seeking access to Edward Snowden’s email, email metadata, passwords or encryption keys. And presumably, Levison doesn’t want to grant that access.

“I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States,” writes Levison, based on his experience. This message seems to be a loud and clear one. Washington, D.C.-based think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation predicts that U.S. cloud companies will lose from $21.5 to $35 billion over the next three years. They admit that it is a “rough guess” based on surveys about the chilling effects of the NSA leaks on U.S.-based cloud businesses.

Update (8/9/13): Edward Snowden drew attention to other American companies in the Guardian, telling Glenn Greenwald that they should take a page from the Lavabit book to protect their users: “Employees and leaders at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren’t fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are. The defense they have offered to this point is that they were compelled by laws they do not agree with, but one day of downtime for the coalition of their services could achieve what a hundred Lavabits could not.”

Meanwhile, Lavabit’s users are not so pleased with the shutdown. Judging from complaints on the Lavabit Facebook wall — e.g., “Shutting down service with no warning and no chance to migrate is complete BULLSH**.” — they care more about service than principles.

Here’s Levison’s full letter:

My Fellow Users,

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely, Ladar Levison Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.

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Wish more Americans had his (and Snowden’s) commitment to traditional American values.

Thanks for keeping us informed.

By the way, a recent speech by Michael Hayden (former NSA and CIA chief) appears to suggest that supporters of Snowden should be viewed as potential terrorists (don’t know if that means that we are on a watch list).

You are entitled to your opinion but it is not 80% of the men that I see walking around with 200 dollar Fendi’s. As long as the Women Demand them, Men will keep supplying them, and it not a young girl that is out there slaughtering cows for a living. They are exponentially getting even for 150 years of oppression. And as far as “Democracy” is concerned – Nothing but a falacy. IT HAS NEVER EXISTED, although many in this country actually believe that they do live in a real “democracy”, while the rest just don’t care as long as they have a fendi in tow.

Bold statement. To understand the rational behind your post I’m afraid I would have to have a bit better explanation into that rational. Please provide your line of thought on your assertion. (I read your post about the Fendi’s but could find no rational for your statement there other than getting even for past male oppression.)

“Meanwhile, Lavabit’s users are not so pleased with the shutdown. Judging from complaints on the Lavabit Facebook wall — e.g., “Shutting down service with no warning and no chance to migrate is complete BULLSH**.” — they care more about service than principles.”

They don’t care about service more than principles, they care about the fact that the founder of their chosen e-mail provider had plenty of time to do “significant soul searching” and chose to protect a single member of the service, but not enough decency to allow everyone else to know about what’s going on and migrate their data/notify their friends, colleagues, or other services they’re subscribed to about a change in e-mail address.

I don’t use lavabit, but that most certainly is “BULLSH**” no matter how you look at it.

Given the secrecy, it’s hard to know whether the urgency was a result of bad planning, because he got shut down against his will for not complying with a government order, because his servers have already been seized… or something else. One user reported that the service was giving a “down for maintenance” message earlier in the day.

In any state there is a balance between individual freedoms and security. In the USA the state has used the pretext of terrorism to massively increase their own power. And to take away the rights and freedoms of individual citizens on an unprecedented scale. This has been seen in excesses such as Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, widespread use of torture, NSA spying on innocent citizens and drone strikes killing people on very frail pretexts. These are but the tip of the iceberg. What the state is doing, both legally and illegally amounts to a security state similar to that of the Stasi. Executive Order 13224, USA Patriot Act, Homeland Security Act, SAFETY Act and many more statutes transformed America a long way away from the ideals of the founding fathers. The time has surely come for activists to enforce the provisions of the Fourth Amendment and restore rights and powers to citizens. Throughout all this the US Congress has failed their voters. They have been complicit with the administration and should be ashamed of themselves.

Absolutely right on Bruce. The sad facts are our Members of Congress either got the briefing and didn’t find it concerning enough to build in adequate protections or didn’t even think it important enough to bother to attend the briefings. I suspect they were all out hassling each over their stupid ideologies or raising money.

The one thing we can be assured of is only a few, including the members of the responsible Senate and House Committees, raised any questions or demanded changes. People keep voting these people into office as if they had some concern for the country. The candidates have nothing more in mind than getting elected or re-elected. Once you have voted for them, you usefulness is zip.

Bruce, I agree with your statements with the exception of taking away the rights and freedoms of individual citizens being on an unprecedented scale. If you go back to the civil war you will find that these abuses pale in comparison to those by Lincoln. Other than that I have no quibble with your remark and am in support of the same. As far as your representatives in DC, I think we all know what they are there for. The feathering of their nest is uppermost in their minds. Professional politicians have always been a bane to this country and it’s ideals. I think it was Twain who said words to the effect that politicians are the only distinctly criminal class we have in this country. They prove that every time they eschew the interests of their constituents in their vote, lie to you to get elected or craft legislation excluding themselves from laws enacted.